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80% of success is showing up

It's funny how true this quote is.

There are three people that I really admire: _why, Zed Shaw, and Yehuda Katz.
And to simplify my tenses a bit, I'll speak of _why in the present tense. What
do these three guys have in common? They all churn out badass software like
nobody's business. _why started so many projects that it just adds to his
mythical qualities; Zed has been cranking out software and blogs left and
right, and Yehuda's "I'm quitting Engine Yard" post basically said "I'm
pretty much done rebuilding the server side of software in my own image, now
it's time for me to focus on the client side of the equation." Not with that
much hubris, of course, but it's pretty much true.

Now, I don't mean to imply that they've 'just shown up,' but it seems to me
that productivity is directly related to just getting started on things. I've
had people tell me that they think I'm superhumanly productive, which is funny
to me: I'm almost constantly fretting about how much time I waste every day.
And while I do have a ton of projects, unlike all those guys, I tend to not
fully finish them. It's something that I've been trying to work on lately,
because I have so many things that I want to accomplish.

For me, the biggest hold on cranking out even more stuff is just simply
starting to work. Often, if i slack off for half an hour, I slack off all
evening. Now that there's a TV with Netflix in my house again, it's difficult
to not watch all of the amazing documentaries that are on there. But if I
manage to start working on stuff, I find that I keep doing it. It's like I get
to pick one or the other: projects or slacking. I can't quite seem to do both.
And so I've been starting some minor experimentation to see if I can't work on
projects more often than not.

One thing that I've sort of half-tried is the Pomodoro Technique. It's
pretty sweet: basically, you set a timer for 25 minutes, and start working.
You can take a break when it goes off. Surely you can wait to refresh Hacker
News for 25 minutes, right? That's something else I've done: on Friday, I put
Reddit and HN in my /etc/hosts file. They're totally blocked, for now. After
last week's situation, I spent waaaay too much freaking time on HN, even
for me. I love it, and I'm learning a ton every day, but it's becoming an
issue for my productivity. So it's gone for a bit. It's been rough, but I've
been getting lots done, and I think when I start reading it again, I'll be
able to keep it at reasonable levels.

Anyway, so that's what I'm doing to keep productive. Anyone else have any
thoughts on this? How do you keep working on side projects? What works for
you?